In Countries Around the World, Home Is The Most Dangerous Place for Women

Around the world, home is the most dangerous place for women and girls. According to new data published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, some 50,000 women were killed by intimate partners…

Around the world, home is the most dangerous place for women and girls.

According to new data published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, some 50,000 women were killed by intimate partners or relatives last year, accounting for 58 percent of all female homicides. That translates into nearly six women being killed every hour by someone close to them.

“While the vast majority of homicide victims are men, women continue to pay the highest price as a result of gender inequality, discrimination and negative stereotypes. They are also the most likely to be killed by intimate partners and family,” Yury Fedotov, the organization’s executive director, said in the report.

A total of 87,000 women were intentionally killed in 2017, according to the U.N. report. While women face gender-based violence and death in every corner of the world, the rates of female homicide by romantic partners or family members can differ significantly by both region and country.

The largest number of women killed by intimate partners and family members was in Asia, where some 20,000 women were murdered last year. In Africa, 19,000 women were killed by partners or family members, followed by 8,000 in the Americas.

However, adjusting for population, women in Africa were at highest risk of intimate partner and family-related homicide. There, 3.1 women out of 100,000 were murdered by someone close to them, accounting for more than two thirds of all female homicides.

The Americas had the second-highest rate of homicide, at 1.6, and Asia had the third at 0.9 per 100,000. In Europe, the risk for women is the lowest, as 0.7 women per 100,000 were killed — nearly half the the global average of 1.3.

The data differ slightly when excluding homicides by relatives, and only looking at those committed by intimate partners. Women were at the highest risk of being killed by an intimate partner in Africa and the Americas last year, at 1.7 and 1.2 per 100,000 women, respectively.

Though continental data provides a broad snapshot of female homicide around the world, the risk for women varies widely by country.

In Lithuania, 1 out of every 100,000 women was killed by a family member or partner, compared to 0.2 women in Slovenia. In France, Italy and Switzerland, the rate of homicide by partner or family was 0.4 per 100,000 women.

In Grenada, 3.7 women out of every 100,000 were killed by a romantic partner or a family member in 2017, while 0.5 women out of every 100,000 were murdered by someone close to them in Canada.

Again, the data differ when excluding homicides by family members and instead focusing exclusively on murders committed by a woman’s romantic partner.

In Suriname, where a woman has a 5.8 in 100,000 chance of being killed by anyone, she has a 4.3 in 100,000 chance of being killed by her partner.

In Jamaica, where the female murder rate is 9.3 out of 100,000, 0.9 women out of those 100,000 are killed by intimate partners.

The U.N. also found that, in general, countries with relatively low total female homicide rates have a larger share of female partner or family-member related murders. On the other hand, countries with high female homicide rates have a smaller share of women being killed by those close to them, even though that number is still relatively high.

For example, while only 0.2 women out of 100,000 were murdered in Slovenia last year, nearly all of them were killed by a partner or family member. In contrast, 2.9 women out of every 100,000 were killed in LIthuania, and about a third of those total homicides were committed by a partner or family member.